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An Audacious Proposal

On Friday I'm off to my annual enjoyment of the Master Musician's Festival so I'm writing this a day or two ahead of time. I think I'm safe because I don't expect any significant changes in the situation I'm writing about before press time. As I have often said, I really look forward to this festival not only because of the music but because of the reunion of old friends and people I have come to recognize from years past. Events like these put in stark contrast the way we relate to one another in a more leisurely fashion and how we do so in a political fashion. I question why there has to be such a sharp difference.

When Barack Obama was running for President he said he was going to solve problems by getting all the players around a big table and just hashing things out. I was a Clinton supporter in the primaries and I thought that was a bit of pie in the sky thinking but that was what he called “the audacity of hope.” Now, I grew up in the Sixties and I'm still all for peace, love and hope but I have had my hopes dashed several times and now look at things with a bit more cynicism. Just because it is a fact of life still does not make cynicism a good thing. It is still better to hope for a better outcome. Clinton was defeated, much to my surprise, and Obama showed some creative political smarts. I liked his message and it seems the nation dared hope again as was evidenced in the voting.

I can't think of a President since FDR who was given a worse hand to play than Barack Obama. He campaigned on a platform of changing the way Washington does business but at the final weeks of his campaign the nation was faced with a dilemma the likes of which we had not seen for about eighty years. The President was faced with trashing the key plank of his campaign or trying to do more than one thing at a time. Perhaps looking back one would have done things differently but in life we get very few do overs. So he pressed on and got the health care bill. I am all for the health care bill even though I don't think it went far enough. But one of the things that came from that legislative battle was a clear eyed look at how the big table discussion played out.

The President has been true to his promise of getting people around the big table. The whole idea of the big table was that people would come to it in the spirit of comity and eager to do business for the good of the country. I think the President has to have been a little surprised to learn just how little comity and beneficence people have when they want what they want and hang the good of the country.

He tried the big table negotiation strategy with the health care bill to no avail. Compromises were made to try to bring some of the opposition on board but that met with so little success so as to have been hardly worth it. Now here we are again at the big table and the news the other day was shocking. It seems that the President and Congressional Leadership were actually on the cusp of making a deal in excess of expectation and one that would have been a bit of relief for a nation beset by hard times. But to paraphrase a quote of President Lincoln it seems that defeat was snatched from the hand of certain victory. Speaker Boehner's inability to hold his caucus together to sanction the deal forced the GOP members to run for cover under the banner of Grover Norquist. The Tea Party's members seem ready and willing to force the default of the faith and credit of the United States to, as their pledge states, make Barack Obama a one term President and hang the good of the nation.

Then in an example of perhaps the most craven hypocrisy I have ever seen in politics (yes, I am aware that is a bold statement) Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), the Minority Leader, offered a back door way to allow the President to raise the debt limit AND allow the GOP to vote against it without defeating it. A convoluted mishmash if ever I saw one that required only the President to have intestinal fortitude.

Personally, I think the President and the Speaker should play more golf. That seems to work better if everyone just leaves them alone to work it out. It's a shame to have to do things that way but that is just the way it is if the big people in the room can't be adults. As an alternative I am going to send a copy of this column to the President and Speaker Boehner and invite them to spend a weekend here at the Master Musician's Festival in the spirit of comity and compromise. I just don't see how they could go back to Washington and do business the same way after hearing some of the best music in the country and meeting some of the finest people in the world. But perhaps that is too audacious of me.

That's my take on deliberation, compromise and the audacity of hope. How about you?